About the Book
Title: The Failure of University Education for Development & What To Teach
Instead
Author: Samuel A. Odunsi, Sr.
Genre: Nonfiction, education, economics
Finally, a New Big Idea that Solves
Our Toughest Problems.
New
book by Samuel A. Odunsi, Sr. defines the problem of tacit cultural knowledge
in education and how to solve it.
University education may benefit the
individual, but it has not led to overall economic development. For many developing countries, the hope
behind university education far exceeds the results. The ideas and solution
presented in this book provides a way to equalize the results of university education
with the hope and unrealized expectations behind it.
•
Education cannot teach everything about development.
The most crucial aspects of development are tacit in nature and cannot be
directly expressed or taught. Instead, they are acquired passively in culture.
•
Liberal
Education has struggled with this problem. While its lofty goals are well
defined, they cannot be met without the tacit knowledge for development, which
it can barely define, much less teach.
•
The
concept of “Cultural Diversity” recognizes that there are differences between
cultures, including tacit cultural knowledge.
•
The tacit
knowledge needed for development is not specific knowledge. Instead it is the
connection of the elements of the western economic model, that may be learned
in school, to the language capacity that all human beings already possess and
use for creatively expressing the spoken language.
•
This is
why expatriates from the West and the developed countries of Asia often perform
successfully as managers and entrepreneurs in the developing countries, despite
the constraints of underdevelopment. To them, the elements of the economic
model are merely vocabulary to be expressed as management, administration, or
entrepreneurship, using the language capacity.
•
The
purpose of university education should be to connect technical knowledge about
economic development with the language capacity that students already possess.
In the same way that the human language capacity can be repurposed for the use
of a second language. Graduates can then express the economic model with the
versatility and creativity they already use for expressing the spoken language.
•
The means
for achieving this purpose is now available and presented in the book and on
this site: www.HumanRethink.net.
•
Help bring
real change to our world. Make it happen now. Contact mail@HumanRethink.net
Author Bio
Born in Nigeria,
Samuel A. Odunsi, Sr. left for college in Texas in 1982 and has lived in Austin
ever since.
A new big
idea about how education actually works and how to bring real development to
the rest of the world has finally been developed.
I stumbled on this
discovery decades ago, after years of working as a freelance research assistant
in the Austin, Texas area. I realized that this is what marked the difference
between education that could make the university graduate an effective manager,
no matter the area of specialization, and education that merely promised to do
so. It was the difference between the disorder of the world in which we live,
and one where every country can be as developed as the western nations.
But I was not an
academic, and I’m still not one. This meant I couldn’t pursue the new ideas
full time. Nevertheless, I spent much of my free time researching and
substantiating these ideas. However, the demands of making a living in a
business that is unrelated, and the demands of family made it a never ending
project.
Meanwhile, 9-11
happened, then the Arab Spring, then ISIS.
In all these events, I believe my ideas had an important role to play. I
believe they provide the essential but missing narrative in these events as
well as in many others. The new ideas provide the answer to a lot of questions.
In 2015, after the
loss of my father and younger sister, I realized I may never have the time to
present the ideas in the 5 volumes I had always planned. At the same time, I also realized that the
solution was more important than the presentation or its length. I then
proceeded to write down my key ideas in 1 short volume, using language that is
accessible to the casual reader. I now have a book ready!
I’m in the process of
presenting the contents of the book on Humanrethin.net, broadcasting them as
much as I can, taking on all challengers, and raising funds to begin
implementation anywhere on the planet.
But first, I need to
get the ideas out there. I’m hoping this
book tour will help.
Links
Website: www.HumanRethink.net
Book Excerpts
SYMPTOMS
“The
symptoms of the failure of university education include corruption, poor
governance, instability, poor infrastructure, terrorism, poverty and all the
other problems that we see in underdeveloped countries. As long as university
education remains ineffective, the symptoms are incurable. Nevertheless,
expatriates have always operated and maintained successful businesses and other
organizations of various sizes in these countries. The symptoms do not affect
their performance. The symptoms “affect” only the indigenes of the country. The
performance of expatriates shows that there is no “gradual” in real
development. If the thousands of existing university graduates have been as
effective as the expatriates who make things work in their countries,
underdevelopment will not exist today, the symptoms will be gone.”
“…persistent underdevelopment is a problem that shows
the same symptoms in every country, where university graduates often cannot
independently or autonomously make things work effectively and perpetually without
expatriates. Depending on the size of revenues from natural resources, the size
of foreign aid, globalization, or a lack of these, the number and intensity of
symptoms from this problem may differ from one country to the next. The history
of each country also may be uniquely different. But in varying degrees, the
incurable symptoms of the problem are the same. These symptoms are then forever
studied as independent “causes.” We don’t do that here.
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